Echoes in Darkness

Sometimes your only warning...is Echoes in Darkness

What's mined is mine 5.2

16

MAR/12

The room they entered was trashed. What wasn’t broken or smashed appeared to be burned. The building itself was 6 stories, and the party decided that further investigation was probably prudent. Examining the front door from the inside revealed a silver disc attached to the interior; nobody in the group knew what it was, but logic dictated that they didn’t want to trip whatever it was.

Electricity in the building was spotty, and as the group approached the stairs, they decided to leave the unlit basement for another time and examined the other floors. While rummaging through one of the offices, Ravenous discovered… Brad’s office. Inside of the computer was a series of numbers. Pocketing the numbers, they examined the rest of the building without finding anything of notice.

It was time to examine the mine. Procuring a mining vehicle was fairly easy for Ravenous to do, despite the obvious sabotage attempts destroying the starting mechanisms. Chuck, fairly useless in a tight situation, was left aboard the shuttle to monitor communications and make sure nobody was able to leave without them. Upon arriving at a pair of elevators, Xavier stayed behind while Hat and Ravenous explored the lower shafts.

On the bottom level of the mine, they discovered the connecting tunnel. Nothing was particularly note worthy during their trip, until they noticed something metallic on the ground ahead of them. What appeared to be a gauss rifle was abandoned in the middle of the tunnel, as if somebody dropped it. Hat equipped the weapon and they continued down the tunnel.

Finally, about 17 km into the mine, they found the side path. Exiting their vehicle, they examined the roughly cut tunnel that veered off course from the tunnels original destination. At the mouth, there appeared to be more rifles, as well as bags of explosives. These too looked abandoned, and Hat became uneasy.

Both Hat and Ravenous came to two very different conclusions while examining the gear. Against his better judgement, Ravenous was getting excited about finding whatever was causing the massive amounts of interference. While able to contain his curiosity, it seemed to compel him more than it normally would.

Hat, on the other hand, was paranoid. People who are compelled to carry large quantities of explosives and guns, generally don’t find good reasons to abandon them during missions. And from what they witnessed in the office building, these guys were professionals who knew exactly what they were doing. Hat was very good at identifying suspicious behavior, even when it didn’t exist. This made him even more ready for when the threat was real.

Turning off the telepathic dampener on his hat, he focused on the direction the audit team had gone. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, but he wasn’t going to go marching down some tunnel billions of miles from real civilization to get his head smashed in by some overweight blueberry with a rock complex. The visions flew through his head, and he began to focus on the appropriate area.

As he focused, something slipped. He was still standing, but his mind hit the equivalent of a psychic banana peel. He wasn’t sure if it was affected by something in the tunnel, or one of the many broken areas of his mind (god knew there were more than enough), but it veered off course and went into an area he kept off limits for a reason. It was the reason he wore the hat in the first place.

The raw power that started collecting was more than enough to kill them; even if it didn’t hit them directly, there were enough explosives in the area to do the job. So Hat did the best thing that anybody could do in a situation like this; he panicked.

Already compromised by the situation, Hat tried to push the force as far from their persons as possible. Thankfully, it landed far enough away that they heard was the sound of it crashing to the ground 20 meters away. Unfortunately their vehicle wasn’t quite so lucky; the front half was crushed by the misdirected force.

The sudden loss of a vehicle and the approaching night gave reason to head back for the ship. Hat seemed to be spooked by the entire event, and voiced as much to Ravenous. Ravenous, on the other hand was more intrigued and speculative about the loss of their vehicle. Not knowing of Hats condition, Ravenous had no reason to suspect his group mate, but he still wanted to know what could cause such damage.

Once back to the ship, They learn that frank had cracked the encryption with the codes Ravenous had provided. The codes were most certainly Aslan, but ciphered in a way that even knowing the language of Aslan wouldn’t help. Chuck, proving to be overpaid, was not able to help once again. They went to sleep in the shuttle, with the intention of entering the mine again the next day.